Sunday, September 28, 2014

AMW Cooks: Stuffed Ampalaya recipe.

Happy Sunday AMW Friends!I will be sharing a healthy recipe today! And the vegetable for the day? Bittergourd (aka Ampalaya).

If you are flinching right this moment, let's do a quick *high five*. I'm not a fan of ampalaya dish as well and I recalled picking only the middle part (the pork) when my mom cooks this for us! Now that I'm older, I appreciate the bitter taste of ampalaya and I'm actually looking forward to it on each bite! This is one dish that I'm proud to share (all thanks to my mom for being such a wonderful cook) and I hope non-bittergourd eaters will appreciate this as well!

Try at least 1 before you say NO :)

Ingredients:

Ampalaya

Ground Pork

Garlic

Onion

Salt and Pepper

Egg

Corn Starch

For the sauce:

Light soy sauce

Sugar

Knorr Liquid seasoning

Salt and Pepper

Steps for stuffed Ampalaya:

Cut ampalaya (Bitter Gourd) in 1.5-2 inches and remove the center.

To remove the bitter taste of ampalaya, rub salt and soak ampalaya for a couple of hours. Rinse with water and squeeze off juice. In my case, I prefer to consume ampalaya without removing the bitter taste.

Once ampalaya is ready to be filled with "pork", on a separate bowl, combine ground pork, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, egg and cornstarch, mix well.

Gently stuff the pork mixture inside the ampalaya as shown on photo below.

You can choose to cook this in an oven, or in my case, I steam it using my rice cooker.

Steps for sauce:
The preparation for the sauce is almost the same as Steamed Fish Fillet sauce.

In a pan, sauteed garlic and onion.

Pour in light soy sauce and add a cup of water.

Add a couple teaspoons of brown sugar depending on how sweet you want your sauce to be.

Add salt and pepper.

Include a bit of Knorr Liquid seasoning.

As soon as the stuffed Ampalaya is well cooked, transfer the ampalaya in a serving bowl and pour in the sauce.

ENJOY! Let me know if you tried it and if non-ampalaya eaters enjoyed this dish!